i eee eS oe PES SS aga ee ; RS hl re a al Pt er ee =e ne sient re seeasee ee ee ae ee : Sorees . nae its kb = - : 7 Seater 2 en aor ’ Sree . : Be ar Herre = = ere So OG el FO = poe ot —— eB nit : en i eS ceil ss a, es Fie PD The person ¢ arging this Material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn On or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining ©f books Gre reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY i995 NOV 2 3 MAR’ 19 19h L161 — 0-1096 \ Fim Ty ‘ raul ans a af re! Parents ; ty Sipe ae) es Tia OKRA Uh ka s) Es BRD RHEe a ie sol pi THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE BY STANDISH O’GRADY AUTHOR OF “‘ULRICK THE READY” AND ‘‘THE BOG OF STARS,”’ EDITOR OF ‘‘PACATA HIBERNIA ” LONDON LAWRENCE AND BULLEN, Lr. 16, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1897 [All vights reserved] ne Ricwarp Cray & Sons, Limiter, - Lonpon & Bunaay. e PREFACE Tuts tale, in spite of its title, is not a romance, but an actual historic episode, told with hardly a freer use of the historical imagination than is employed by the more popu- lar and picturesque of our professed historians. There is, however, this difference between my method and theirs, viz. that while they write directly, I aim at a similar result indirectly through a certain dramatization. The same method has been adopted, I think very effectively, by Carlyle, at times, in his history of Frederick the Great. There is probably an Art as well as a Science of history. If that be so, the present work may be regarded as an experiment in that kind of composition, a kind which demands the employment of more than one or two mental faculties on the part both of the reader and of the writer, The authorities for the story are the ‘‘ Annals of the Four _ Masters” ; Philip O’Sullivan’s charmingly Herodotean nar- rative, in Latin, entitled Historia Hibernice ; O’Clery’s ‘“‘Bardic Life of Hugh Roe” ; and the “Calendar of State Papers, Ireland,” from 1587 forward. The colouring, the visualization and dramatization, are, however, derived from a wider circle of contemporary literature. I may add thatthe book contains almost nothing for which there is not direct or indirect historical justification. STANDISH O’GRADY. VT: VIII. XII. oa F XIV. XV. ae Vile XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX, XXI. XXII, XXIII. CONTENTS SIR JOHN PERROTT ... ae THE BOYS ON THE BATTLEMENTS .., Lae THE VICEROY AND THE DARK-DAUGHTER WINES WHITE AND RED oe ee: es RED HUGH AND HIS TUTOR RIDE A-COSHERING TRAPPED ake ihe Be ty NO SUBSTITUTE FOR RED HUGH ... THE SHIPLESS CHIEFTAIN ... as UNCLE SORLEY'S HIGH PERCH Sats ae) HUGH ROE NOT TO BE RELEASED ... ae FITZWILLIAM VISITS THE DARK-DAUGHTER ... WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER Ap PERROTT THE OVERBOLD ... en ane EMERGENCE OF THE NOSELESS ONE... O’ROUANE,. THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD DE PUES pysre cre, ae igh DESCENT FROM THE TURRETS ART KAVANAGH GUARDS THEIR FLIGHT FEAGH MACHUGH ... ea PURSUERS AND PURSUED A WET BIVOUAG SIR FELIM COMES INTO THE SAGA SIR FELIM STRUCK AGHAST res FINDS RELIEF IN A WOMAN’S READY WIT 102 109 120 124 128 131 133 136 141 145 Vill CHAP. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. KR. XEXL XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXY. XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXXVIUI. XXXIX, XL, RA XLII. XLII. XLIV. XLY. XLVI. CONTENTS TWO STRONGHOLDS iets soe toe THE LADY ROSE WATCHING AND LISTENING... RACING AT MIDNIGHT BACK TO THE CASTLE a6 ie AN EARL’S LOVE AFFAIR ‘SPILE AWAY, LAD” GOOD-BYE TO THE CASTLE... AN UNEXPECTED IMPEDIMENT ALONE ON THE WHITE HILLS us, A LEAFY BREAKFAST... IN GLENMALURE his oo A VOICE FROM THE TOMB .... NEWS! NEWS! ee aay, Sate YELLOW-HAIRED TURLOUGH VISITS FEAGH A STORM OF HOOFS ... a Ave RED HUGH GOES OUT FROM GLENMALURE WALLS AND TOWERS ... A CHIEFTAIN TO THE HIGHLANDS BOUND AN EXCELLENT ENGLISH GENTLEMAN STARTING FROM MELLIFONT THE SENTINEL CITY ... yu ee THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN GATES OF ULSTER HOME! POSTSCRIPT... Oe ade ae APPENDIX Ue oh PAGE 147. 153 156 166 172 179 184 188 190 194 197 201 203 207 213 218 228 231 235 243 247 252 263 272 273 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE CHAPTER I SIR JOHN PERROTT THE age of oratory had not yet arrived, and the * man was no orator, yet his speech was a great one the like of which had never before been heard in Ireland. It was proud, arrogant, and boastful, but it was true. On this occasion Brag was a good dog, and hard to beat. The orator had reached the culminating point of a matchless career, and Nature and Man seemed to have conspired to invest it with the utmost possible splendour. It was midsummer—the forenoon of one of those gorgeous days which seem to be without beginning or end—when sunset is not followed by night, but through the brief twilight hours the world is ever cheered with the bright presence of the journeying dawn. Sunshine slept on the grey walls, the buttresses and pinnacles of a great antique church quivered in the shaken silver of poplars, and flashed again from the halbert points and helmets of a ranked soldiery, steel-clad to the knee, B yy THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE © Many civilians were here too, in their plumed hats, copious white collars, and flowing capes. All the pre- cincts were alive with colour—the glitter of brass and steel—the glare of cloth of gold—the glow of richly- dyed mantles and short cloaks. Above the quiet dead was poured to-day a most brilliant tide of life. Yew-trees planted here by the generation which suc- ceeded St. Patrick protested in vain with their monitions of the tears of things, and the eternal tragic, against all that glitter and bravery. To-day none regarded their mementote mori; the tide of life was too full. 3 Beyond the church precincts a vast multitude thronged all approaches save one, which armed men kept free. Hager faces crowded in the windows of the adjacent houses, which were of timber, tall and gabled, with deep, shadow-casting eaves. Towards the east rose the turrets of a great Norman keep. The church was Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, built long since by Sitric the Dane, upon some ancient Celtic foundation, and the time—the gilded iron age of great Hliza, or to be more precise, the 10th day of June, 1588, the year of the Armada. Within, the great church was full of voices. Here sounded the high, clear, level tones of crying heralds, the manlier accents of speaking men, the murmur and hum of a vast auditory. Here a great state function was in progress, for a Government was going out and a Government was coming in. It was a splendid and solemn, almost religious ceremony, celebrated with antique rites. ‘A screen of rich and richly-coloured drapery divided the nave from the chancel. In the midst of the screen, serene and pale, shone the countenance of the virgin Queen. It was a full-length portrait, elaborately SIR JOHN PERROTT 3) painted down to the shining shoes of her imperial feet, Repentant rebel lords have kissed those feet, and be- moaned before them their transgressions and back- slidings. The cult of that great lady was almost the only religion owned by many here. | Hard by in a clear space the chief actors of the stately drama played their parts. The rest of the buildmg was thronged with men who more or less silently assisted. Few of them had ever witnessed any ceremony resembling this, At a certain point in the grandly unfolding solem- nity, a man of huge stature, nearly seven feet high, gorgeously attired, and of a port and presence which caused him to seem even greater than he was, rose and delivered proudly a most proud speech. The gigantic orator was Sir John Perrott, outgoing Viceroy; the person formally addressed—for his words were intended for the ears of the empire—was Sir William Fitzwilliam, the new Lord Deputy. By direction of the Queen, Fitzwilliam was about to undertake the government of the most turbulent and unbridled aristocracy in Europe. They were present during the Christ Church ceremony, having come together for that purpose, as with one consent, from the ends of the island. They were all clothed in irreproachable English costume, and yet a nice ob- server would have perceived that this costume had been adopted for the nonce. There was, indeed, nothing Irish to catch the eye; but when they mur- mured together during the ceremony, a listener might have detected the deeper accents of the Gael. One of them, Turlough Lynagh, known in the North as O'Neill, and Captain of Ulster, and at Court as Sir Turlough, and Earl of Clan-Connell, bore the Sword 4 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE of State before Perrott. The new Viceroy having been sworn, Perrott took the sword from O’Neill, and, placing it in the hands of Fitzwilliam, delivered the following speech :— “Now, my Lord, since that by her Mayesty’s direction I have given up the government of this kingdom «nto your hands, I must give your lordship to understand (and I thank God I may say so) that I leave wt wn perfect peace and tranquillity, which [ hope your lordship will certify unto her Majesty and the Lords of the Council. LI aust add thus much—if there be any man in this kingdom sus- ; pected to be evil-minded to the State, who 1s able to draw but six swordsmen after him into the field, of he hath not already put in pledges for his fidelity, so your lordship shall think it necessary, I will undertake, though now a private man, to send for him, and of he come not in within twenty days I will forfert the credit and reputation of my Government.” It was a proud speech, and not less true than proud. When Perrott, in his vauntings, turned round upon that crowd of notables, he only saw nods of assent, or heard men murmuring, “It is true, your Honour,” and “Tq, se go deimin.” The chieftainry of all Ireland were present on this occasion. Not only had they come to Dublin to take their leave of Perrott and witness his departure, but they had come six weeks before the time, as an especial mark of honour and affection. A journey to Dublin was a serious undertaking in those days of bad roads or no roads. It was also a most costly undertaking. No chief could show his face abroad without the countenance and support of a great feudal retinue. He could not move but like Vic-lan- Wohr, with “his tail on,” the gentlemen of his house- hold perfectly mounted and equipped, his saffron-vested SIR JOHN PERROTT 5 body-guard of claymores and battle-axes, and the gillies who waited on them, his bard, his harpers, his shana- chies, and generally the utmost feudal splendour that his state could afford, whose sustenance away from home often left him poor for years. Nevertheless they had come. They stood around him and behind him in Christ Church as he made the ears of the new Lord Deputy to tingle, and his enemies, for he had many, to cower before him. And, observe, that this speech was delivered on the eve of the sailing of the Spanish ‘Armada. Wherever else the Empire was assailable it was invulnerable in Ireland. Ireland was never so loyal, at any time in her history, as during the Vice- royalty of Perrott. Here were men whom he had conquered in war, whom he had conciliated by courtesy, or inspired with confidence by his just and honourable ways. The greatest of them, who twice and thrice and many times had drawn sword against the State, to-day in court attire bore the Sword of State before Perrott. Had the Queen permitted it he would have brought over “to London at their own charges” all this flock of tamed dynasts to swear allegiance to their Queen, and kiss her wonderful feet. The Viceroy, too, as their Sovereign’s deputy, was entitled to honour, But every man of them believed that, on cause shown, he had a right inherited from afar, and exercised times without number, to draw sword against both, and with steel and fire right all wrongs, whether received from the State or from one another. Some of the greatest clans, notably the Southern Geraldines, had been conquered and exter- minated; and yet the spirit of the men who to-day surrounded Perrott was much the same as that which 6 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE animated Humphrey Bigod in his famous colloquy with the Sovereign— Sir Earl, you shall either go or hang. Sir King, I will neither go nor hang. Of these men who stood around Perrott in Christ Church Cathedral, and who seemed so docile and tract- ~ able, there was hardly one who had not been in re- bellion, hardly one who had not broken castles, and wasted territories, and fired towns, warring against the Queen, or who was not perfectly ready to do the same again, on fit cause shown. Black Tom, the Butler Karl of Ormond; and Captain of Tipperary, once wrote to the Queen :—“I would I knew who advised your Highness to this course, that I might put my sword through him.” And even he, King Edward’s play- fellow, let loose his clan in rebellion when the Viceroy was not to his liking. Of O'Rourke, Brian of the Ramparts, Lord of Leitrim, was it not written—“ He is the proudest man who walks upon the earth to-day” ? O’Flaherty, asked to show by what title he held Iar- Connaught, answered straight, “By the sword, man; what shall I say else?” Such were they all. Not nobles of the modern type, but dynasts of the medizeval, semi-independent, or altogether independent, touchy and jealous, ever on the verge of rebellion. Their egoism and pride were like Lucifer’s. Per- rott. had tamed them as no Viceroy had ever tamed them before. The Queen was their Sovereign, none of them denied that; and they gazed with a mixture of superstitious and chivalrous awe upon her picture, which Sir Henry Sidney had brought into Ireland, and which to-day filled the centre of the elaborate tapestry which draped the east end of the Cathedral. SIR JOHN PERROTT i Perrott knew how to gain men’s hearts, but knew, too, how to make the law a terror to evil-doers. Sorley Boy, the MacDonald of Antrim and the Isles, rebelled against him. Perrott gathered to his side all the chiefs of Meath, Leinster, and Munster and invaded him. He took all his castles, wasted his territories, slew 1,200 of his people, and so tamed Sorley that he came humbly to Dublin and made a prostrate sub- mission. Sorley surrendered all his lands, gave his sons—one of them the first Earl of Antrim—to Perrott as hostages, swore allegiance in all the Queen’s courts, flung down his sword, and on his knees lamented his transgressions before the Queen’s picture, and kissed the “pantofle” (slipper) of the same, the stern Viceroy standing above him. Such was Perrott. The chief- tains loved him, but they also feared. In him they met their master, and joyfully recognized the fact. In the pride and “towering temper” of the great Viceroy they saw a certain sublime reflection of them- selves. Perrott burned and slew, with a wrath as destructive as their own, but yet with a placability which was not theirs, and hoisted great chiefs to the tops of church spires, and went trampling and hectoring about the island ina manner which amazed the best of them. Eventually they grew to be proud of such a master, son of King Harry, too, a great point in Perrott’s favour, and in the end fell passionately in love with him. It was a strange flock, but the flock suited the shepherd, and the shepherd the flock. Grex and Pro-rex liked each other well. Wentworth after- wards ruled Ireland with a quasi-regal sway. Men feared Wentworth, but Perrott they feared and loved. Of Perrott’s Irish career, the Christ Church scene was the dramatic and perfectly-appropriate conclusion, and 8 - THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE Perrott’s high-vaunting words were true. From the centre to the sea all Ireland was Perrott-land. Perrott’s strong words and resonant accents rang through the building, re-echoed with “True, your honour” and “ Za se go deimin” by his flock of tamed nobles, who gazed upon their idol with looks of fear, admiration, and love—of sorrow, too, for he was being borne away from them, and sinister rumours were abroad as to the probable nature of his reception in England. Perrott having ceased speaking the new Viceroy mildly responded. He was an old man and an invalid. He was sick on his way from London, and sick after his arrival in St. Sepulchre’s, the Archbishop’s palace, whence he wrote to Burleigh complaining of his health and complaining of Perrott. Fitzwilliam had a great experience in Irish affairs, and was in this respect a contrast to Perrott, who had scarcely any. He had served under Sussex, and Sidney, and Lord Grey de Wilton, and had been him- self in the government of the realm. So Fitzwilliam was a man of experience. He was also what we now term. a safe man. But his royal mistress had yet to learn that safe men are sometimes dangerous, and that great experience will not always make great rulers. He now, with a face and voice anything but suggest- ive of the man-ruler, replied that “all was well, and that he wished he might leave the kingdom no worse than his lordship had done.” “ After this they parted,” continues the chronicler, “and the new Lord Deputy went to his house, but most of the nobility and gentry stayed to attend upon Sir John Perrott, who that day was invited to dine with the Mayor of Dublin. When he returned to his lodging they all went to take their leave of him. As he came from his lodging to the SIR JOHN PERROTT 9 quay of Dublin to take boat, the throng of people coming to salute him, some with cries of applause and some with tears bemoaning his departure, was so great that he was almost two hours before he could pass the streets, and was forced twice or thrice to take house to avoid the press.” Turlough Lynagh, writes an eye-witness, accompanied him to the boat, and, standing on the river's side while he saw the ship under sail, with many tears lamented his departure. And the City of Dublin, as a testimony of their love and affection for him, sent some of their young men with shot, who waited on him as his guard till he arrived at his seat, called Carew Castle, in Pembrokeshire. Fifteen years before, his departure from Munster, of which he had been President, is thus chronicled by the “ Four Masters ” :— “1573—The President of the two Provinces of Munster went to England in the beginning of the ensuing harvest, after having pacified and subdued the country, leaving officers, councillors, and captains of his own to rule and preside over it, in accordance with his own wishes. The departure of the President was lamented by the poor, the widows, and the weak and helpless of the land.” And now the second departure of Perrott from Treland drew forth upon an infinitely greater scale (including all classes) the love and regret of the Irish nation, Slowly, with difficulty, and many delays, the horsemen of the guard cleared a way through the thronging multitude, as the great Englishman and the attendant nobles and the “young men with shot” moved down to the quay. It seemed as if destiny in sport had given distracted Ireland at last a ruler 10 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE who could rule, full master of men’s: hearts as well as of their persons, only to mock her with his speedy withdrawal. | As the ship which bore Perrott dropped down the Liffey, Turlough Lynagh, the O’Neill, stood weeping on the river side. Weeping, says the chronicler, but recalling the Homeric simplicity of the age, its unre- strained passion, and its naturalness, as well as certain characteristics of the modern peasantry, whose manners were formed by the chiefs, certain we may be that the O’Neill and Perrott’s other Irish friends cried out, lifting up their voices, and that their lamentation was loud as well as deep. Nor did lamentation suffice old Turlough Lynagh. As the boat which bore Perrott put away from the wharf, the passionate old chieftain rushed breast-deep into the Liffey to wring once more in love the hand which had conquered him in war. Nor did Perrott witness this scene dry-eyed, having himself passions by no means under control. Indeed he was not at all such a self-restraiing, divinely tranquil man as Plato would have selected to be presi- dent of his ideal republic. Once at the Council Board in Dublin Castle he struck in the face Sir Nicholas Bagenal, Marshal of Ireland, and gave him the lie direct—a man nearly as passionate and headstrong as himself. His own council he used to storm at as “traitors, curs, and dung-hill beggars.” When Presi- dent of Munster, he sent a challenge of single combat to Sir James Fitzgerald, captain of the rebel Geman He is the wild bastard of the Fairy Queen, Sir Satyrane, the salvage youth who tamed tigers and loved Una. In his “towering tempers” he did not spare the Queen’s majesty, even to her face. Such a man, so headstrong and passionate, surely felt to the ™ SIR JOHN PERROTT 11 quick the extraordinary emotion which his departure called forth. So down the Liffey, past Dunleary and the Hill of Howth, Ireland’s one sovereign lord and master sailed away to meet his doom—arraignment, false witness, a mock trial, the Tower, and murder in the Tower. His sails sank below the waves of the Irish Sea, and the most singular of Viceroyalties burned down like a blaze. The great bastard had gone out,.and the man of much experience had come in, and Ireland, too, like Perrott, went on to meet her doom. Perrott’s weeping friends returned to their “ lodgings” in those quaint Dublin streets, revolving many things, of the past and of the future, of imperial, peerless Perrott, whom all Ireland feared and loved, and of the extraordinary being whom, with the Spaniard on the sea, the Queen and Council had sent to be their ruler, a gouty old gentleman and “of a moist habit,” known to hate the flashing of stript steel, and to love craftiness and double-dealing, a Lord Deputy who could not even ride, “such were his impediments,’ and who was extremely partial to—gifts. Perrott’s chieftains knew a man when they saw him. Of Tudor state-craft they were very ignorant. CHAPTER II THE BOYS ON THE BATTLEMENTS THAT departure of Perrott was indeed very grand and affecting, the surging crowds repelled by halberdiers and horsemen, the brilliant procession to the wharf, Perrott ridimg there in the midst of the earls and barons, and, what was far more significant, of the untitled chieftainry of the realm, the weeping on the shore, and the Captain of Ulster, the O’Neill, dashing out into the stream to take a last farewell of the Deputy. Yet, im human life as in nature, it is surfaces only that glitter; tapestry the most gorgeous has its seamy side. The Devil and his angels were as busy then as they are now. Of Perrott’s moral obliquities, of the seamy side of his splendid Viceroyalty, we shall see something as the tale runs on. Here just now it must double back and linger a while in the midst of that triumphant and gloriously unfolding drama of which Perrott was the chief actor. Not a hundred yards from the wharf rose Dublin Castle, a great rectangular construction rising into towers. One of these was named after a Viceroy of the Plantagenet period called De Birmingham. On 12 THE BOYS ON THE BATTLEMENTS 13 the battlements of Birmingham Tower stood three lads watching the departure of Perrott, and as they watched they cursed the out-goimg Viceroy. Near them stood men in armour, with calivers on their shoulders and faintly smoking matches, with swords and daggers at their sides, and huge pistols stuck in their girdles. The boys wore copious white frills and red capes, hats of the broad-leaved Spanish type, and velvet jerkins. For their dress, they might be sons of State officials, who, by official favour, had secured this fine point of vantage from which to observe all the moving pageantry of the Viceroy’s out-going. Yet they were far, indeed, from being such. Their speech, when they murmured together, was pure Gaelic, and their hearts had nothing in common with the life which went on around. The State had set its mark on the exterior of these boys, enclosing their small bodies with all the outward signs and tokens of “loyalty and civility”; but their minds were their own, and had no relation with the new epoch. | ~ Of the three, one taller than the others stood in the middle. His companions leaned towards him, talking Gaelic in low voices. He stood straight as a rod. His complexion was white and ruddy, brilliantly so; his eyes grey and bright, with a most keen outlook, ex- pressing a tameless energy. His long hair, a glowing auburn, rolled upon his shoulders. He was sixteen years of age, yet his countenance already bore signs of a mind beyond his years. Such was his bearing, that in any company a stranger would quickly observe him, and inquire with interest concerning a youth so re- markable for his beauty and proud air of self-possession and self-control. 14 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE This boy was the famous Red Hugh O’Donnell. He was here against his will, a hostage with the State for the fidelity of his clan in the approaching Spanish crisis; a clan which was one of the greatest of the unsubdued nations of Ireland, the Clan Donnell of the north-west. Of that nation his father was prince, and he himself rigdamna, or princeps designatus. He was a captive, and yet a potential political, and military force in the island. A near ancestor of this boy had made war against the State, with half of Ireland following his banners. No soldier of the Crown had yet set hostile foot within the borders of O’Donnell land. Yet the lad is here in Dublin Castle, a hostage, guarded by armed men, in a close imprisonment, which for just one day has been relaxed by order of the Deputy, partly as a compliment to his rank, chiefly in order that the power, glory, and prosperity of the State as to-day exhibited might make a salutary impression on his young mind. From some of the staffs rising from the tower gay bunting ripples and floats. Others are surmounted by round black balls. They are the tarred heads of men, great men who had rebelled against the State, and ended so. For it was Hliza- bethan Ireland, and the times, with all their splendour and suggestions of chivalry, never failed to suggest also an age of terror. Beneath the emblazoned banners and the heads the three boys looked at Perrott. | When the huge crowd on the wharfs began to dwindle, a fussy, short-breathed old gentleman climbed from the interior on to the parapets, and, with a rasp- ing, ungracious voice, bad the soldiers take the boys again to “the Grate.” The old gentleman was Mr. Maplesdeane, new Oonstable of the Castle vice Mr. THE BOYS ON THE BATTLEMENTS: 15 Seagrave, just retired. It was Mr. Maplesdeane’s special function to watch over and safeguard the hostages, of whom, besides this lad and his companions, there were many in Dublin Castle. The watching and safe-guarding of the hostages of Ireland was now more than ever necessary, for the Spanish Armada was about to sail, if indeed it was not already upon the sea. That slender boy, the leader of the three, turned quickly at the sound of those brusque, abrupt tones, and looked at the speaker. His eyelids just trembled as he bent his bright, grey eyes on the speaker, other- wise his face was impassive, and his aspect calm. He bowed gravely as if in acknowledgment of a courtesy, a little to the surprise of Mr. Maplesdeane, and descended the stone stairs into the interior of the tower, followed by his two companions. How did the Government get this young Eagle of the unsubdued North into their stone cage? Thereby hangs a tale—a tale which, rightly told, will illustrate for us a good deal of this strange and obscure time— a famous tale, one of the most famous in our history, intrinsically dramatic, and possessing incidentally a large historical significance, for the boy with whom it is concerned was reserved by Fate for a wonderful career, This red-haired stripling, whom to-night Mr. Maples- deane drives into “the Grate” like a sheep, will be known far and wide; he will waste many lands, win many battles, storm castles innumerable, and even walled cities. His name will one day strike fear into the hearts of viceroys, here where he is now a mere captive and prisoner, driven hither and thither by old 16 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE Mr, Maplesdeane. Ireland will yet quake to this boy’s tread. To understand how the Government secured this paragon of hostages we must travel some twelve months backwards, and into the heart of Perrott’s viceroyalty. CHAPTER III THE VICEROY AND THE DARK-DAUGHTER In the spring of 1587 Perrott was exceedingly active and anxious. The noise of the making of the Armada was ever in his ears. He feared lest Ireland should be its destination. The Catholic party in Eng- land was strong; but Ireland was all Catholic—there was hardly a Protestant in the whole island. Moreover, a rhymed couplet was much in vogue at this time, the burden of which was not reassuring to an Irish viceroy— “He who would England win Must with Ireland begin.” Treland was, indeed, loyal to the Queen, and animated with a passionate feeling of strong personal regard for Sir John Perrott. But Perrott had no army. In any emergency he could only rely upon the feudal levy, that is to say, upon the chieftainry themselves, and the forces which by law they were bound to bring to his aid. The fidelity of the chieftains was to him, therefore, a vital necessity of the situation. All were, indeed, obedient to the Queen and friendly tohimself, but he could not count on the continuance of those feelings should a powerful Spanish army land in the island. Accordingly, he determined to make assurance doubly 17 C 18 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE sure, and bind the chieftains to the State by all means in his power. Upon doubtful men within his reach he laid sudden hands, and confined them in the Castle. All the rest he bade send in hostages for their fidelity during the Spanish crisis. All, or almost all, obeyed, and the sons and foster-brothers of the chieftains wended towards Dublin, or other strong places within the realm. Perrotit’s call for hostages was felt to be reasonable, and was promptly responded to. One powerful family disobeyed, from whose disobedience sprang the tragical and romantic tale with which we have now to deal. Sir Hugh O'Donnell, who ruled over the north-west of Ireland, the country which we | now call the County of Donegal, but which was then known as Tir-Connall, would send in no hostages. Had he been his own master he would have done so; but he was not. Once he was a great warrior, and a staunch ally of the Queen during the Shane O'Neill wars. He overthrew Shane in battle in 1567, after which Shane the Proud tumbled headlong to ruin. But Sir Hugh was now old and broken; his eyes, dim with age, were turning, in true medizval fashion, towards the cloister, whither, indeed, not long after this he finally retired. But not old or broken was his spouse. She was in the prime of life. The chieftainess, not the chieftain, governed, these years, the north-west | of Ireland, and Lady O’Donnell, for reasons of her own, would not send, or suffer her lord to send, any of their children as hostages to Perrott. She was not Irish but Scotch, scion of one of the greatest Highland families, the MacDonalds, Lords of the Isles. This lady was the mother of Red Hugh, the slender, grey- eyed, red-haired boy, whom we have just seen bowing gravely, perhaps ironically, to fussy old Mr. Maples- THE VICEROY AND THE DARK-DAUGHTER 19 deane, on the battlements of Birmingham Tower in Dublin Castle. Her name is peculiar. She was the Ineen-Du MacDonald, that is to say, Dark-Daughter Macdonald. She possessed great estates, as well as great interest and influence in the west of Scotland, and, though wife of the O'Donnell, and residing with him at Donegal House, kept in her pay and under her own command an army of Scotch mercenaries, Nor was this remark- able woman a termagant in the vulgar sense of the word, for we are informed by the bardic historian, that she “excelled in feminine accomplishments.” Her mother, the Lady Agnes Campbell, is described by Sir Henry Sidney, father of Sir Philip, as a wise and civil woman, speaking French and Italian, and as well- mannered as any lady he had ever met. Hence we may fairly presume that the bardic historian has not exaggerated in the high character which he gives to her daughter. Circumstances, however, chiefly the weakness and decrepitude of her lord, compelled her to play a masculine part. The grand aim of her life was to secure the reversion of the O’Donnell chieftainship for her eldest son, an object not easily to be secured in those days of elective chiefs and succession by tanistry, which was but an Irish name for force. Pursuing this end, she brought in and kept in her pay a reliable Scotch army to hold in check and overawe the various competitors for the O’Donnell-ship. In the end she actually took the field at the head of her Scotch guards, and fought and won battles; for though she “excelled in feminine accomplishments,” yet, as we are informed by the same authority, “she had the heart of a hero and the soul of a champion, and was chief counsellor and adviser of the men of Tir-Connall in her time.” 20 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE The Dark-Daughter was no favourite with the Govern- ment. Her lightest movements were regularly entered in the State Papers with suspicious comments. In fact, she was a known and proved enemy to the State. State policy had clipped away the hegemony exercised by the O’Donnells of old time over Connaught. Lady O’Donnell once made a desperate.effort to restore that hegemony. On the night of the battle of Zutphen, when Sir Philip Sydney lay dying, the President of Connaught fought and beat a great army of Mac- Donalds and Campbells who had invaded his presidency. In the Scotch camp was discovered a letter from Lady O'Donnell to the chiefs of the invading army. _ “Be of good cheer, I have this day landed in the Foyle with fifteen hundred men to support your inva- sion. Through whatever country you pass cause O’Donnell’s rent to be paid.” Surely this was a stirring daughter of the Isles, and not without reason was she jealously regarded by the Government. In the State Papers she is sometimes called “Lady O’Donnell,” more usually “the Scotch woman,” or “the Scotch wife of Sir Hugh O’Donnell,” and described a8 “a great bringer in of Scots “—“ Red Shanks,” as they were termed in the official jargon of the day. How to wring hostages from a lady of this temper and this strength was a nice problem which presented itself to Sir John Perrott in the year 1587, when from all the Irish territories hostages were meekly riding in to his strong places. ; When, in that year, Perrott demanded her children as hostages, the Dark-Daughter refused to send them, doubled her army of Hebridean bowmen and gallow- glasses, and defied the Viceroy. She had not “a Spanish heart,’ or any leaning whatsoever to the THE VICEROY AND THE DARK-DAUGHTER 21 Spaniard ; but she believed, and with good reason too, that the Government, once in possession of her children, would not restore them, save on conditions highly against their and her interest. Yet to Perrott, his ears filled with the noise of the making of the Armada, Tir-Connall’s hostages were an imperative necessity of the State. By force or fraud he would have them; and in this mood wrote the following letter to the Queen and the: Lords of the Council— “For O'Donnell, of tt would please her Majesty to appoint me to go thither, I will make him and his MacSweenies deliver in what pledges I list. Otherwise, uf wt please her Majesty, I could take himself, his wife, whois a great bringer in of Scots, and perhaps his son, Hugh Roe (Red Hugh), by sending them a boat with wines,” May 2, 1587. This “boat with wines” was not only the source of all Red Hugh’s sorrows, but will be found to have been a grand determining factor in the history of the huge convulsion known as the Nine Years’ War. CHAPTER XII WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER THE chamber in which the boys were imprisoned was above the entrance of the Castle, high up in the tower, “next the turrets,” but right above the great gate of the Castle. In front of that entrance was a bridge span- ning this moat which surrounded the Castle. To and fro over this bridge passed the Castle traffic. To and fro there came and went all the men who governed Ireland, and all the men who were interested in the government of Ireland—the Lords of the Council and Mr. Secretary Fenton and all the officials and clerks of the various bureaus. Amongst all these, sidling along softly, mild and self- contained, attracting no particular attention, wended in and out Mr, Patrick Foxe, Walsingham’s Castle spy, who spied on rulers as well as ruled. Walsingham’s curious, suspicious eyes roved here daily, looking through Mr. Patrick’s. Fitzwilliam and his Council were as much under surveillance as the dynasts were. With difficulty did Patrick get “a clerk’s room” in the Castle; but he got it, and in the evenings, from his lodgings, wrote excellent letters to his patron, very brief and pithy, as full of information as an egg is of meat. Red ‘Hugh never gave that ne it thought, though he might 78 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE have seen him every day sidling in softly, but Patrick thought a great deal about Red Hugh. There came and went daily big Sir George Carew, Master of the Ordnance, his thoughts and talk all of lasts of powder, of lead, match, calivers, falconets, and culverins, of skians, battle-axes, and war harness. In the Castle he had his own office, where he audited the accounts of his deputy-masters all over the realm; this year, at his solicitation, Burleigh had that office newly “ planked.” Sir George will be a great man yet, President of Munster, Earl of Totness, supposed author and certain hero of Pacata Hibernia, and do doughty things—a clever, sly, and very capable official Red Hugh saw him a hundred times pass there, little dreaming what a cowardly stroke of death would one day fall upon him from that big Master of the Ordnance. The boy’s chamber looked eastward down College Green towards the ruinous towers of the Monastery of All Saints. From his window, if these towers did not obstruct, Red Hugh saw ships come and go in Dublin Harbour; saw of a summer morning the red sun rise gloriously from the waves of the Irish Sea. Dermot MacMurrough founded that monastery ; and fair Eva, Strongbow’s wife, confirmed the foundation, and King John approved. But the end had arrived for All Saints as for so much else in Ireland. Red Hugh saw those sacred towers and walls fallmg. Masons were at work there in his time pulling down the old Norman- Irish pile, making way for the advent of modern culture and a clear space for the building of Trinity College, Dublin. Red Hugh saw the learned Usher, Archdeacon Usher, father of the very learned Usher, walking about in his sombre garb, well-pleased, and the scarlet- cloaked Mayor and Aldermen of Dublin assisting. To WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER 19 Usher and those scarlet-cloaked persons Ireland owes her university, and it was a-building while Red Hugh was imprisoned in that Castle chamber looking east- ward, scarce a bow-shot from the builders. There was no lack of amusing sights to be seen by the boy from that window. There he saw the great Perrott ride out, girt by a crowd of chiefs and nobles, his own father, Sir Hugh O’Donnell, one of them ; and pale, anxious-looking Fitzwilliam, full of aches and griefs, ride in, his coach drawn, perhaps, by Perrott’s war-horse, “fairest and best in Ireland,” matched with another, and by his side the Lady Anne Fitzwilliam. She was sister of Sir Henry Sidney and aunt of the immortal Philip, gentlest, bravest, and most beautiful of Elizabethan men—the divine Astrophel. There, too, he saw ride into Court, Astrophel’s friend and poet, the dreaming Spenser, and heard his horse’s hoofs sound hollow in the echoing arches below. The dreaming Spenser had his fits of wakefulness, too, could look sharply after his own interests, and do a little fighting and plundering quite in the style of an Irish dynast. Would the reader care to glance at the author of the Faery Queen at home during the period of Red Hugh’s captivity, and see the dreaming man wide awake, his oaten reed racked for a while, and singing robes on their peg? “ October 12, 1589. “ Maurice de Rupe and Fermoy—i. e. the Lord Roche— to Walsingham—wishes the enclosed to be lard before the Queen. “Edmund Spenser, falsely pretending title to certain castles and sixteen plowlands, hath taken possession thereof. Also, by threatening and menacing the said Lord Roche's 80 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE tenants, and by seizing their cattle, and beating the Lord Roche's servants and bailiffs, he has wasted sia plowlands of his lordship’s lands,” And Sir Walter Raleigh Red Hugh saw too, and surely with enthusiastic admiration, a man admired by the whole world. He was here during Hugh’s cap- tivity, attended by Irish boy-chiefs, his pages, for the most part scions of the great Clan Carty in the South, where his estates lay. Most of the Irish chiefs of the next great rebellion were educated by Englishmen, or under English influences, direct or indirect, which is a curious fact. There oftentimes Red Hugh saw his brother-in-law, the strongly-built and swarthy Earl of Tyrone, ride in to take his seat in the Council, stopping a moment to look up, and make friendly inquiries of the poor captive lad. Ever gay, light-hearted, and witty was that accomplished Earl, though he played for such terrible stakes. | Red Hugh’s sister Jane was Countess of Tyrone, and the Earl his own fast friend. Also at Dungannon there was a little girl who was supposed to be Red Hugh’s sweetheart, and was his betrothed child-wife. Let us hope that he wrote her letters during his captivity by such means of communication as sflorae) In June 1588 Hugh’s father was at the Castile assisting in Perrott’s glorious exodus. Once again in the Armada winter the boy, with what feoliti gat saw ‘his old father surrounded by his chief gentlemen and gallowglasses, and many familiar Tir-Connallian faces, ride over the bridge of the moat. Sir Hugh this time brought a ransom for the boy, not yellow gold only, but thirty olive-complexioned Spaniards in handlocks. WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER roll There were wet eyes amongst those Tir-Connallians as they saw above them the poor captive boy look out from his prison cell. The olive-complexioned Spaniards were hanged in the Castle yard—every man of them. Nevertheless, Sir Hugh and the Tir-Connallians could not recover their boy chief. The Queen and Burleigh said “ No.” There, too, his cousin Hugh Maguire, Lord of Fer- managh, big, handsome, ruddy-faced, a young giant, and as valiant as he was big, shouted up to the grated window, jolliest and bravest of all the chieftains. Sir Warham St. Leger, too, Vice-President of Munster, might have been seen there by the boy. If Sir Warham and Maguire met they probably contemplated each other's big proportions with respect. They were the two best horsemen in Ireland, and fell by each other’s hands under the cliffs of Carrigrohan, by the margin of the winding, silvery Lee—two splendid types of sixteenth century Irish chivalry. This was that chieftain who was so ready to receive a sheriff into Fermanagh, but wished first to learn his eric, that when the sheriff was slain he might levy the eric off the country. The strong hand which had raised Hugh to the captainship of the Maguire nation was no other than that brave Donald the bastard whom the Dark- Daughter slew. Many a familiar face was raised to that window, many a manly voice shouting kindly Gaelic or Elizabethan English was uplifted there; Hugh and his comrades pleasantly responsive from above. He saw Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne ride in there under safe-conduct from the Viceroy, having the guarantee of Loftus, the Chancellor, for his return, and attended by young Captain Dudley Loftus, the G 82 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE Chancellor’s son. All Dublin ran in crowds to see that black-browed, dark-eyed prince of rapparee lords and black-mailers, the arch-enemy of the Pale. Few men looked on his stern visage without hatred, for few were the Palesmen who had not lost a relative or dear friend through him. Amongst other notables slain by Feagh was the fat Sir George Carew, father of the big Master of the Ordnance, slain by Feagh in the battle of Glenmalure. Sir Walter Raleigh and Master Edmund Spenser narrowly escaped death on the same occasion. This visit of Feagh to Fitzwilliam was paid shortly after the Lord Deputy’s arrival, in the autumn of 1588. Remember this swarthy rapparee lord of the Wicklow mountains. We shall meet him again. The great Adam Loftus himself—archbishop, chancel- lor, and councillor—Red Hugh saw a hundred times, once a poor chaplain, now a pillar of the State. Rich, prosperous, and powerful was Adam Loftus, allied through marriages and betrothals “with the best and chiefest names in all the Pale—men who had the dispending of two or even three hundred pounds by the year!” Another notable ecclesiastic and councillor wended there daily, faring to and from the Council Board, Bishop Jones, of Meath, solid and prudent, though he would cry out when excited at cards, “ God's wounds, man, play the ten of hearts;” and Miler Magrath, Archbishop of Cashel, the over-prudent and cunning, a mighty eater of bishoprics. When Miler could not be permitted to eat a fresh bishopric, he quartered his hounds and huntsmen upon it. The young giant, Hugh Maguire, may have been to the Castle to complain of Miler’s hounds, for he had already written a complaint of such doings on the part of that mighty southern pluralist, who went about in WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER 83 armour like a man of war, and had his life-guard like the chief of an unshired country. Bishop O’Brien, of Killaloe, another of these strange divines, staked Church livings and ecclesiastical lands on the fall of the dice. No wonder his sons became stout rebels. The Mac-an-Aspick O’Briens, sons of the bishop, were left. slenderly provided for by their jolly sire. They were mostly ecclesiastical scapegraces, these Irish bishops of the Reformation, half courtiers, half chief- tains, and very unpastoral; perhaps no worse or no better than any other men in that strange century of transition, only very unpastoral. Red Hugh and his comrades saw a great deal of interesting, bright, many-coloured life from that window above the entrance to the Castle. They were allowed to receive visitors, too, though no doubt under very strict conditions. Letters, too, surely came to him, first read by the proper officials, from his mother among others. Letter-writing was far more common in Ehzabethan Ireland than one might expect. The Dark-Daughter was famous for womanly accomplish- ments. Her mother was that cultivated lady whom Sir Henry Sidney so much admired. We have already seen one of the Dark-Daughter’s letters. It is not only possible but probable that he was written to occasionally by his sister Nuala, and his brothers Rory and Manus, and little Cathbarr (Top of Battle), From home, too, he received hampers of provisions and good things made up with maternal love and tears ; for it is another astonishing fact that the Viceroys who im- mured hostages looked to their kinsfolk to supply them with food. If the kinsfolk did not, and the Christian men and women of Dublin did not, the poor boys starved. 84 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE When Burleigh rated. Fitzwilliam about a certain escape of hostages, the Viceroy replied—“It were better they escaped than lie to rot and starve m the Grate.” “None whom I took,’ observed Perrott, “were by their kinsfolk suffered to starve.” Neither recognized a duty to supply food. Truly an age of iron, heey gilded ! How went on, ice years, the great game in which Red Hugh was a little-regarded pawn? What of the kings and queens, and the greater pieces on the board ? As a move in that game, Queen Elizabeth put our hero into that square which stood above the main entrance of the Castle in Dublin. It was no accident. The Queen put him there, and knew very well that he was there, and, as we have seen, never forgot Red Hugh’s locus in quo. The great game went well for the Reformation just now. Elizabeth and Maurice,. Prince of Orange, were giving a good account of the Spaniard in the Lowlands. Henry of Navarre, strengthened with a great many crowns sent him by Elizabeth, was baffling the Spaniard in the South of France, and Parma and the Guises in the North. Protestant Germany, aided too by our Queen’s money, was stirring in the same cause. Pope Sixtus, her arch-foe, and yet chief admirer, was dead. Philip was very old and exceedingly crippled by the destruction of his Armada. Elizabeth had harried his peninsular coast with a fleet and army, and English marine adventurers were troubling the Spaniard upon the deep, far and wide fluttering his galleons over the water-ways of the world. Catholic England, having now no Catholic Mary for Queen, was quiet and loyal, though Sir William Stanley and many others had taken service under the Spanish King. James VI. WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER 85 of Scotland was friendly. He this year sent a gift to the Queen as an earnest of his good-will. The gift was an Irish dynast, his name, a celebrated one in contemporary Irish history, Sir Brian of the Ramparts, O’Rourke, Lord of Leitrim. Old Burleigh, now seventy-one, was anxious to retire from office, but the Queen rallied him back to harness. “T never saw the Lord Treasurer so lusty or so fresh of hue,’ writes an admirer this year, The Queen herself was fifty-six, and would dance, “I assure you, seven or eight galliards of a morning, besides music and singing,’ and was also as prudent and courageous as ever. The star of Essex was rising clear and bright exceedingly ; he was but twenty-four, yet already a power in the land. Walsingham was dead, and his great army of spies (Patrick Foxe amongst them) left without a paymaster. He died this year (1590), and died poor, having spent all his substance in the Queen’s service. The manner in which the great Secretary would bully and rebuke Fitzwilliam and Bishop Jones and other creatures of that type in Ireland is quite exhilarating. One can almost see them pale and quaking, and bowing down to the very ground. His only child, remember, widow of Sir Philip Sidney, was now the Countess of Robert, Earl of Essex. Her third husband will be an Irish chieftain. But our concern is not with the great pieces on the board, only with the small. Let us return to that ill-starred lad and his comrades. Some three months after his incarceration Red Hugh was visited by a young Oxonian en route to the west for the Christmas holidays. Under what style the youth was entered on the books of that seat of learning I don’t know. It was probably Bernard 86 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE Rourke, but his barbaric name when the lad was at home was Brian Ogue na Sampthach O’Rourke—~. e. Brian O’Rourke, the younger, of the Battle-axes. He was eldest son of O'Rourke, Lord of Leitrim, that very proud western chief referred to already, and was first cousin, once removed, of our hero. The sons of the Irish gentry were already beginning to find their way to Oxford. I discover there, these .years, besides the young gentleman mentioned, Richard, son of the chief of the High Burkes, William, son of the chief of Clan Kelly, and several others. Into Hugh’s mournful chamber, on some dull December day, arrayed in the height of the English vogue, burst this lively youth, making a sunshine in that gloomy chamber, though followed and watched by the constable, or one of his subordinates. Red Hugh, we learn, during his confine- ment, was permitted to receive visitors. This young Oxonian was destined to play a great part in the later portion of Red Hugh’s career. Students of Irish history know something of the Battle of the Curlew Mountains. That battle was won by Red Hugh mainly through the prowess of his cousin, Brian Ogue, Oxon. Red Hugh, his fine gold a little dulled by captivity and sorrow, recognized with difficulty his Irish cousin in this fashionable youth, who rattled off English as if to the manner born, and was full of foreign experiences, un- Irish ways and phrases, and curious modern instances. Hugh was for doleful captivity, he knew not how long, or whether his red head might not, ere summer, exhibit itself on a stake above the Castle for the offences of his people. Brian was for home, holidays, hunting, hawking, and all manner of rural sports and amusements in a territory where he was heir presump- tive to the Chieftainship, and where he would be little WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER 87 troubled by that bée noir of Irish Elizabethan gentle- men, the sheriff. In the adjoming county of Sligo there was, indeed, an abominable sheriff, a fellow who, according to young Davy O’Dowd, “chief of his name,’ spared not to take from Sligoese gentlemen “horse” (war horse), “hackney, hawk, hound, mantle, or table- cloth; yea, even if it be a man’s wife or daughter, which Taafe doth fancy, he must have her to his will.” In Leitrim, Brian Ogue’s county, there was, indeed, a sheriff, but one who was humble enough, and thought more about saving his own skin than of interfering with O’Rourke privileges and seignories. Whoever there took to his own use horses, hawks, table-cloths, or young women, it was not the sheriff. The cousins had a good deal to tell each other, which must be left to the imagination. In the end, the Oxford man, with a sufficient escort of O’Rourke horse, went cheerily westward, and poor Hugh turned sadly to his prison avocations, whatever they were. In the ensuing summer, a little after Sir John Perrott’s glorious departure, the Imperial and Imsh Councils were fluttered by unwelcome tidings of the Oxonian. Young O’Rourke, accompanied by an Irish gentleman named Charles Trevor, suddenly absconded from Oxford. The authorities knew well the significance of this flight. It meant that O'Rourke of Leitrim was about to go into rebellion. And, sure enough, not long after- wards, Patrick Foxe, a Castle clerk, but in Walsingham’s pay as a spy, inditing one of his little succinct notes to Walsingham, informed his honour that old O’Rourke “desired his Sheriff to shift somewhere else for an office.” Efforts were made to intercept the fugitives. Trevor was taken at Chester, conveyed to Dublin, and immured in the Castle as a fellow-prisoner with our 88 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE hero; but Brian Ogue escaped, and got home. His Oxford education was ended. Brian Ogue of the Battle-axes no longer cried Adswm in the college classes. ‘“ Barbara, felapton, daru fertoque,’ and the other educational processes of Elizabethan Oxford, will have to go on without Brian Ogue na Sampthach. The boy is cracking crowns in the West, and will crack logic no more. When next he turns up in the history of his country, it is in this wise :— paws esterday, wn the afternoon, Sir Brian O'Rourke's two sons, his brothers, and all his force, to the number of 400 gallow-glasses and shot, with forty horsemen, preyed all Tirreragh”—a baronial division of Sligo— “from Downeyle to Touregoe, burnt dwers towns in the same, and murdered certain sulyects also. The prey which they carried with them is esteemed to be in number 3000 cows and near 1000 mares. The country crieth out jor her Majesty's forces to defend them. O Rourke sent Jor all the wood-kerne and bad members dwelling on these borders, and licensed them to prey, rob, and spoil her Majesty's subjects within the province, and especially this county.” Brian Ogue, I have not the least doubt, found such life a vast deal pleasanter than ‘ Barbara, felapton’; and observe, too, that if the boy construed Homer while at Oxford, he was making himself acquainted with a state of society exactly similar to that which prevailed in his own time in the west of Ireland, and of which he himself was a chief figure. Returning to his father’s castle at Dromahaire, with those fine droves of cattle and herds of mares, swept out of Tirreragh of the green pastures, Brian Ogue had his own Homers to sing his praises, and an to trvwmphe to which the WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER $9 liveliest of college wine-parties must have seemed very small beer indeed. The young Oxonian was now only serving his ap- prenticeship with his father and his uncles. Shortly afterwards we find him leading O’Rourke’s forces, or a band of them, and almost making an end of Davy O’Dowd’s injurious sheriff. “Last Friday, O Rourke’s son, Brian,’ the same who ran away from Oxford, “murdered (sic) twenty-five soldiers and three young gentlemen on the highway, in company of the Sheriff of Sligo, who escaped from them sore wounded.” The wounded sheriff was David O’Dowd’s béte noir, the unconscionable rascal who scrupled not to convey even a poor gentleman’s table-cloth. In fact, during all the time of Red Hugh’s captivity the West was convulsed with ceaseless war; and Hugh’s Oxford cousin keeps perpetually appearing and disappearing amid the stormy battle-axe business that raged there. Indeed, the conflict between Bingham, President of Connaught, and this rebellious western chieftainry, mad about sheriffs and other such matters, never closed at all until Hugh himself went into it, in the general rebellion known as the Nine Years’ War— the grand final struggle between the reguli and the sheriffs. The reguli and the sheriffs could not live together; either these or those had to go. The sheriffs were usually strangers, often low men, and even shop- keepers. Great gentlemen, especially great Irish gentle- men, found it awfully hard to obey such fellows. Observe, too, that these sheriffs were ill-paid and ill- controlled, and went about with small armies exacting “coigne and livery” at discretion from the tenants of the gentry and the gentry themselves. Remember, 90 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE too, that before the advent of the sheriffs the chieftains were essentially a sort of kings. Flesh and blood could not stand it, especially such flesh and blood. Sure we may be that the young Oxonian went into this red business with great alacrity. To our hero all this western battleaxing had more than a spectacular interest. Most of Connaught was, properly, O’Donnell-land. The flashing of steel there and the roar of calivers arose out of territories over which his house, of old time, had exercised a strong dominion, and perhaps will again. Things, however, of a very different nature and complexion demand attention now. eae One summer a strange procession passed, under the boy’s eyes, down the slope of Castle Hill. There halbertmen and trumpeters and “ Queen’s messengers,” as a sort of guard of honour, enclosed a terrible figure, It was a priest, clad in new ecclesiastical raiment provided by the authorities. His countenance, never comely, the executioner had made yet more horrible by mutilation. This priest has no nose. Vice and cunning were stamped upon his countenance; yet he ~ went down Castle Hill, stepping proudly, on his way to London to the Imperial Council. CHAPTER XIII PERROTT THE OVERBOLD - LAME Justice, blind and lame, has been questing for Perrott ever since that triumphal outgoing, search- ing for him by devious ways and through strange regions. Now at last the world’s slow-hound has got upon his traces, and has him well in the wind. A terrible hunting is abroad, and the quarry is the great Viceroy who stole Hugh Roe. One powerful, cals minded, and determined ‘foe Perrott left behind him in Ireland; it was the new Viceroy. ‘Till Perrott was well off on Treland’s shores Fitzwilliam was painfully aware that he was himself a mere nobody and a cipher. That was hard to-endure, and, even then, Perrott’s sharp and ill-controlled tongue had uttered scornful words concerning him, which reached Fitzwilliam’s ears and rankled in the soul of the sick man. At all events Fitzwilliam was hardly warm in office when he began to “nibble at” bis prede- cessor, and with a most mordant and venomous tooth. “He took away the tapestries of the State apart- ments,” complained the new Deputy to the lords of the Council. “They were my own property,’ replied Perrott. “The young women of my household have cut them up for stools and cushions.” 91 92 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE Fitzwilliam.—“ He treated me very ill before his de- parture, leaving me in a weak way for the governance of this turbulent people.” Perrott.— ‘I put into his hands, in Dublin, all the lords of Ireland. If he let them go without taking some straight course with them for the government of the realm, that is his default.” Fitzwilliam.—“ Your lordships, he showed me a face of unkindness in all things.” Perrott.—“ By no means, but the reverse. And as a proof of it I gave him a very fine horse, a horse of war—a very fine horse.” Fitzwilliam.—“ Your lordships, he was a very sorry beast, and unfit for service (war), so that I had to put him under Lady Fitzwilliam’s coach, matched with another. And I refused him first when offered, and if he send for the old beast now I will give him to the messenger, and a present to boot.” Perrott (fuming).—*“ Your lordships, he was known to be the fairest and best horse in Ireland. And I think he refused him as bishops do their bishoprics. And he might well put him under a coach, for he cannot ride, such are his impediments.” This last was a savage stroke on Perrott’s part. Then the wordy war died away, and Perrott forgot all about it, but Fitzwilliam did not forget. Henceforth Fitzwilliam hated Perrott with a fell hatred, and longed for his destruction. He was a curious mixture of strength and weakness, of resolution, talent, cunning, and pusillanimity. One of his State documents runs thus :— “T have to complain to your lordships of Lady Bourchier, who last Sunday sat im Lady Fitzwilliam’s pew!” Yet the overthrow of such a man as Perrott seemed PERROTT THE OVERBOLD 93 for a long time impossible. Perrott, the foremost man of his day, the head of a great party, the Queen’s half- brother, “enabled” with host of friends and followers, the man who ruled Ireland like an irresponsible King, and without an army. Such a viceroyalty as Perrott’s the Empire had never seen. It was not only splendidly brilliant in outward show, but substantially beneficial to the State, and to the Irish authority and power of his mistress. The free Parliament of the Irish nation, which he convened in Dublin in 1585, attended by representatives of every princely family in the island, ratified anew the title of Elizabeth as Regina Hiberme, did everything that Perrott told it to do, and but for the obstacle supplied by Poyning’s Law, would have granted the Queen an Irish subsidy, mirabile dictu ! Without drawing a sword, Perrott caused the chief- tains of Connaught to surrender their regal rights and descend to the position of mere subjects, a really great achievement, in point of fact, the conquest of a Pro- vince. And he did all this without an army, by the magic of his name and fame, and the unique force and fascination of his personality, aided somewhat, too, we may presume, by his great stature. The simple chief- tainry loved magnitude in a ruler, being themselves, as a rule, men of inches. But what chiefly overawed their minds, and predisposed them to the most willing obedience, was the fact that he was a King’s son. His illegitimacy was hardly a slur in a country where, if any, only a slight distinction was drawn between the sons of wives and the sons of concubines, and where the State, when State purposes were to be subserved, had no hesitation in preferrmg the unlawful to the lawful issue of the chieftains. How could the bar sinister be anywhere a serious disadvantage in an age 94, THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE when Henry VIII. seriously proposed to exalt his bastard son, the Earl of Southampton, to the throne of England? Perrott governed Ireland like an absolute monarch, partly by reason: of his personal qualities, but mainly because all men believed that he was Sir John Tudor, the only surviving son of King Henry VIII. Since the time of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, these king-loving Irish reguli had seen no viceroy so much to their mind. When Perrott returned to England, aud took his seat in the Council after his amazing and unpre-. cedented viceroyalty, he was by far the greatest man in the empire, and was perfectly aware him- self of the fact. He was a soldier of proved valour, skill, and conduct, an administrator of unex- ampled efficiency and success. He had governed a turbulent and warlike nation as that nation had never been governed before. In trying times, when the Queen’s sovereignty seemed to quake to the blast of the Spanish terror, the State had leaned with its whole weight upon Perrott, and on his strong shoulders he had upheld the brunt of the same as if it were a feather. When Perrott took his seat at the Imperial Council-table 1t was with the air of a man who had done great things, and was about to do greater; of a man who intended to make his presence felt there and his will observed. He was too high, proud, brave, and impetuous to veil himself in hypocrisies, and seem to go one way when he meant to go another. With cards scarcely concealed, Perrott now sat down to play at a table where men’s heads were the stakes, where the game was dead-earnest, the very rigour of the game, and where, above each player, suspended by an invisible hair, glittered always the shining axe of PERROTT THE OVERBOLD 95 the headsman. At that table Perrott, his hand full of trump cards, his heart full of proud self-confidence and conscious rectitude of purpose, sat down to play. Voices from within, and also voices from without, called to him to play boldly and for the highest stakes. The voices from within we know, or can guess; the voices from without, what were they ? Now, and for a long time past, the English people, by every known iden were urging the Queen to nominate her successor, and so give contentment and a sense of security to the land. This, not only with emphasis but with passion; the Queen declared that she would not do. Her reasons were partly feminine and personal, partly patriotic, chiefly the former. She would not, she said, consent “to have her shroud held up before her eyes.” She looked upon the ap- pointment of a successor much as weak men at all times regard the making of a will, and Queen Hlizabeth, “the lion-hearted daughter of the Tudors,’ was in many respects both very feminine and very weak. Historians, with their “lion-hearted daughter of the Tudors,” are too apt to forget that the Queen was a woman under her robes, and, after all, only Elizabeth Tudor—a woman and a Celt. Let me here make a short digression, and tell the story of her Highness’s aching tooth. The royal tooth ached, and the Imperial Council met and debated upon this high matter. It was like a meeting of the Roman Flamens, met to consider a portent, such as that the statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus had sneezed thrice, or broken into a sweat. Elizabeth, it must always be remembered, was a sort of goddess, her cult deeper and sincerer than it is easy to imagine in our times. A large State corre- 96 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE spondence now ensued concerning the great question, who was the best dentist in the world ?—to whom, beyond all others, would England confide the task of extracting that tooth, or of causing it to cease to ache ? The best was discovered on the continent, but instead of flymg to the relief of her Highness he only wrote letters of advice—“If the tooth be sapped and under- mined, then If it show a cavity at the top, then——.,” ete., etc. Eventually, great rewards and honours being proffered, this wisest of dentists crossed the seas with his box of instruments, reached White- hall, and in the presence of the Queen’s Councillors of State examined the Royal tooth, looked wiser than any owl, and finally pronounced in favour of extract- ing. But at the sight of the instruments her Highness’s great heart failed; the lion-hearted daughter of the Tudors, though she could hurl foul scorn upon Parma, and do and say many mighty things, quailed before the dentist and his glittering forceps. In this emergency his Grace of Canterbury advanced. “Your Highness,” he said, “I have not many teeth left, therefore can ill spare even one from the poor remnant. But, to convince your Highness, in a matter of this moment, how very small and transient is the dolour, I shall e’en permit the chirurgeon to draw forth a jaw-tooth.” This was done, his Grace all the time smiling as hard as he could, and testifying in every way that, so far from being dolorous, the extraction of jaw-teeth was rather pleasant. | Nevertheless, her Highness could not be persuaded. She preferred to abide her aching tooth. PERROTT THE OVERBOLD 97 Queen Elizabeth, as I say, being very feminine, would by no means consent to the appointment of a successor, or the hanging up of her shroud before her eyes. There was another reason still more feminine which she used to allege. She never could forget, she said, the manner in which she herself had been courted while she was still only the Princess Elizabeth, during the lifetime of her sister Mary, and all because she was known and recognized as the heiress-apparent to the Throne. Then, too, she probably perceived that to guide England well through those troublous times it was essential that she should not part with one iota of her sovereignty, and the appointment of a successor would certainly, to some extent, diminish her lustre and impair her power. She, Elizabeth, would con- tinue to be for England’s life’s sake, as well as for her own comfort and glory—the sole fountain of all honour and all power. To her alone should all eyes turn, all homage be rendered, and all knees bow. The Tudor princes were far indeed from being angels, but they instinctively identified their own glory and power with the interests of their people. Now one of the rules by which the Tudors directed their policy was to tolerate no great subject. The Tudors passed to the Throne of England over the ruins of the great territorial houses. While they reigned the ancient nobility, such of them as still survived, were kept well down. The Tudors governed by favour of the nation through agents whom they themselves selected. When any such became too great he was sooner or later thrown down. Often he did not see whence the blow came. The Sovereign decreed his fall, and he fell. When Perrott laid down that triumphant H 98 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE viceroyalty, and returned to London he was in danger. He did not know it himself. If any one hinted such a thing to Perrott we can imagine how he in his great tempestuous way—which reminded men of King Hal —would have scoffed at such a thought. “ Have I not served my royal mistress and sister as she has never been served before? Have I not been faithful to her in intention and in fact? Am I not so now? Man,I perceive thou art of small discernment. No one can prove, no one can imagine aught against me.” So Perrott might have stormed against the adviser, and used far “larger” words than these, and yet the adviser would have been right. Perrott with the best intentions was in jeopardy, and even great jeopardy, He was in jeopardy exactly because of those brilliant services of which he was so proud. He was great, famous, and powerful, and therefore he was in danger. The Queen was his kinswoman, but, as a faithful adviser would have taken care to intimate, “for that very reason your honour is in all the greater danger. If you were a Perrott, this magnitude to which you have grown might be tolerated, but you are a Tudor, not a Perrott, and there are men (not a few) in the two realms who would make you King.” Perrott’s only chance of safety was to walk humbly, to order himself lowly and reverently, to forget or to seem to forget that he had done great things, to forget that a very warlike nation, a days sail from England, was at his beck and call, to be very courteous and forbearing with all men, even with those whom he knew to be cowards or nincompoops, and, above all, not to meddle with affairs of high Imperial moment, or use his power and prestige in any way to force the will PERROTT THE OVERBOLD 99 of the Queen. By such conduct alone could Perrott remain in public life and save his head, and in every respect he did exactly the reverse. Openly, and even furiously, he set himself against the succession claims of the King of Scots. James King of Scots despatched a herald, or pursuivant, to him while he was yet Viceroy. Perrott treated the ambassador with scant courtesy, and delayed to give him his discharge. “Your honour,” said the Scot, “I wait an answer for my king.” “Thy king! thy king!” cried Perrott, “What care I for thy king? I will give thee an answer when and how I like.” Returning to England, he opposed the Scotch King’s clams in the same high-handed and tempestuous fashion. With what Aebeny ¢ That I cannot say, nor who was the puppet whose claims Perrott advocated, but of this we may be sure, that Perrott and the great party which supported him, intended that Perrott, and Perrott alone, should govern England. In his madness he seems to have prescribed some course for the Queen, urging it as one who had the power to force her will. Some one entering the Queen’s chamber, from which her half-brother had just gone out, found her Highness weeping; we are not told whether those tears were tears of sorrow or of wrath, possibly both. Perrott had dared to ¢a/k in an overbearing manner to her—her, Queen of England, France, and Ireland—possibly with the best intentions, as Knox had talked to Mary Stuart, and the Queen had not taken his exhortations in good part. A very simple man was Perrott if he thought that he could bend that high imperial soul, or drive her 100 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE by a hair’s breadth from her predetermined course. Perrott did not force the Queen’s will, but he did precipitate his own ruin. He would have it so. He was by no means wary enough, or sure-footed enough for the high slippery altitudes where he was now walking, nay striding, and even swaggering with reck- less self-confidence. Historians, of a certain kind, think that the reports of the State trials of those days settle everything. “Look at the august court which condemned Anne Boleyn,” cries Mr. Froude. “Could such a court decree aught that was unjust?” The so-called State trials were sham trials. The true trial was in the mind of the Sovereign and a select few sitting in secret. The true trial was never reported. No one outside of that high court knew anything about it. There the accused was tried and condemned for his or her true offence. In the State trial he or she was accused of something else, something that would hit in otherwise with State policy. He might be accused of “Spaniolizing,” or hasty indecent speech, or she of light conduct, or I know not what. Who, for example, believes the mon- strous charges urged against Anne Boleyn? All the steps by which Perrott was destroyed we know. They may be followed one by one in the contemporary State Papers, and amongst those steps are judicial verdicts directed by the Crown. The downfall of Perrott is but a type of the downfall of many, male and female, in that terrible century. Perrott was now a doomed man. His greatness, his power, and his birth were of themselves all but sufficient to sink him in such an age, when the policy of the State of England was governed by axioms dear to the ancient tyrant, and tall poppies fell, simply because PERROTT THE OVERBOLD 101 they were tall. But in addition Perrott had shown himself masterful, and this decided his fate. Queen Klizabeth would have no Mayor of the Palace. If any great man aspired to be that, she first humbled him and reduced his credit and prestige. If, after that, he persisted, his blood would be on his own head. “JT never knew one to do well,’ writes Perrott, “in that realm of Ireland, but he was afterwards stung and bitten.” So was Perrott, but in his case the stinging was to the heart, and the biting with fangs spurting the poison of death. CHAPTER XIV EMERGENCE OF THE NOSELESS ONE OvER sleeping Dublin the lark soared and sang from the meadows where the Castle ward grazed their horses, It was night, but the dawn was not far off. Then somewhere within the grim keep bugles sang too, and hoarse voices sounded, and there was a noise of preparation in the vague interior; something not part of the daily life of the Castle was going forward there. Hugh Roe and his comrades bestirred themselves, sat up, made surmises, and asked each other questions in Gaelic. They dressed darkling, and crowded to the window, curious to learn what these untimely sounds might mean. It was midsummer; the glimmering dawn trembled over land and sea, Morning, a lance of rosy gold lay all along the grey quivering horizon of the Irish Sea. One splash of red, deepening to blood-red, showed where | the sun, issuing out of the womb of night, would make his little-regarded avatar. And still the bugles sang, bugle after bugle, and the noise of all those interior movements slackened not but swelled. Then, abrupt and startling, leaped forth a roll of drums and the clear voice of fifes,in the still and dewy dawn. Suddenly, without warning, the red eye of the sun 102 EMERGENCE OF THE NOSELESS ONE 103 flashed, and it was day. The boys craned their innocent heads between the iron stanchions, curious to see what was coming. A solemn procession deployed now through the wide gateway of Dublin Castle. First came trumpeters, stepping alert and blowing, as if for a triumph; then the fifes and drums; the Queen’s kerne, with light feet and lighter hearts, sworded and spear-casting warriors came next, dancing as they went, and were succeeded in turn by stalwart and sober ranks of armed pikemen, followed by a troop of horse in glittering mail. Then came a young gallant, riding, arrayed, he and his attendants, in scarlet and gold, tall, slim, and handsome, a most courtly youth. The letters E.R. embroidered on his left breast showed that he was a Queen’s messenger. A miscellaneous crowd of men, women, and children followed. The Queen’s messenger looked back at them from time to time, as if he were a shepherd followed by his flock. Of this flock many seemed sad, but some gay. Amongst the gay ones there strutted, by himself, an unwieldy figure dressed in black, wearing a decent ecclesiastical collar and flat cap. To judge by his garb, he seemed a respectable if over-fed Church dignitary, and he strutted along there with an air of self-importance, as if conscious that he was the centre of this procession. Such indeed he was. Once or twice he turned round to speak with a pale, weak, fair-haired woman who followed, leading a string of children. She and they were neatly and decently dressed. The hostages peering from their gate started when they saw the man’s face. It was not pleasant to look at. He had no nose. His countenance, charged with vice and cunning, the executioner had made yet more horrible by that mutilation. In spite of skilfully dis- 104 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE posed hair, an observer might have perceived too that he had no ears. So, in the midst of his guard of honour, and conducted by Queen’s messengers, the earless and noseless one stepped proudly down Castle Hill The man is black destiny on the track of Perrott, a hound of hell slipped upon the great ex- Viceroy by his foes, for Perrott is no longer the hunter, he is the hunted. The eternal tragic and the tears of things have begun at last to close round the mighty one, for truly, as the pious Four observe, “There is no human glory but its end is sorrow.” How and whence arose this ominous figure, whose transit was witnessed by the boys that lovely June morning, when all the world looked so serene, still steeped in the pure glory of the dawn, and while the larks still sang their matin lay ? During Perrott’s viceroyalty there lived in the neighbourhood of Waterford, on the banks of the Nore, a low priest, Sir Denis O’Rouane, a lumpish, oily, un- wholesome-looking creature—stupid, indeed, but cun- ning too. “Sir,” by the way, in this context has nothing to do with knighthood. It was a title worn then by ecclesiastics, as they now wear that of “ Father.” Sir or Father Denis O’Rouane was not a very canonical priest, for he had a wife, or rib of some sort, named Margaret Leonard, and a flock of little O’Rouanes. In spite of these impediments Sir Denis drove flourishing religious trade with the poor people. of the. neighbour- hood, marrying, burying, christening, laying ghosts, ete. He led about a sister, a wife, and a string of young children, and he had no ears; a proof that he and the law criminal had had some mutual acquaintance. But in spite of all, he did very well in his vocation till another practitioner opened in the same neighbourhood. This EMERGENCE OF THE NOSELESS ONE 105 interloper had cups, vestments, and other “ Popish paraphernalia,” including even a gorgeous super-altare. O’Rouane could not stand up to a rival possessed of such a plant. As his trade declined, slowly his wrath kindled, and in his wrath he resolved to root out and abolish this scandalous interloper. The question was how ? First he sought to set the authorities in motion, upon “information received.” But that was no easy task. In Elizabethan Ireland when a priest discharged his functions quietly and under the rose, he was not interfered with. If he kept clear of politics, and did not make his presence obnoxious to the authorities, they on their side let him alone. Sir Denis failed in his first attempt to put down the opposition. Turning over the problem in his dull mind, one day he was heard to laugh softly to himself, and in the morn- ing mounted his nag and ambled off all the way to Dublin to see a friend. The name of the friend was Byrd, Henry Byrd, a scrivener by trade, a meagre, poor creature, showing a few sandy hairs which did service for a beard, with a nervous manner, shifty eyes, and long lean fingers, very unlike the fat and oily digits of Sir Denis O’Rouane. It was low water just now with Byrd, a man who had had losses. Once he was clerk in the High Commission Court. It was a court which was supposed to take ‘cognizance of Popery and Puritanism, and fine and con- fine Catholics and Ultra+Protestants, but was only now and again suffered. by the Queen to be active. Once when. “the court was in action Byrd, instead of doing ‘his business honestly and like a good clerk,. revealed its secrets to certain Catholic noblemen and: gentlemen, receiving from them in return divers crowns.and even 106 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE “angels.” Byrd’s rogueries were discovered, and he ceased to be a clerk of the High Commission Court, but was not otherwise punished, or had undergone his punishment at the time when Sir Denis O’Rouane rode through the south port into Dublin. He was now only a scrivener, and not thriving in his occupation. He had in his possession, owing to his former office, the autographs of many great men, amongst them the bold and strong caligraphy with which Perrott was in the habit of subscribing documents. In a quiet back room of a low public-house in the Liberties, with just enough of light by which to see each other’s ugly faces, and a supply of agua vite between them, this pair of rascals, the fat Celt and the lean Saxon, met, collogued, and came to an agreement. “ Your hand upon that,’ quoth Sir Denis at parting, and the lean hand and the oily one pressed each other affectionately. Next morning Sir Denis rode through the south port, homewards bound, with much fat satisfaction in his face. He had in his bosom a warrant addressed to the Sheriff of Waterford, and subscribed with the name of Perrott, directing him to search that opposition house for Popish paraphernalia. Some unknown third hand now intervened, and in due time the warrant found its way into the sheriff’s office. Presently the sheriff and his men broke into the opposition house and carried off the whole plant, swper-altare and all. Sir Denis in this manner abolished that unconscionable poacher on his preserves; business revived; the little O’Rouanes, who for a while had pined, were now joyfully conscious of having a sufficiency of bread and meat in their stomachs, and warm clothes on their backs, and Margaret Leonard’s respect for her lord and master, which had drooped during those evil days, waxed EMERGENCE OF THE NOSELESS ONE 107 again, and Sir Denis became ‘her man of men, the meritorious food-provider of that uncanonical yet human little establishment there on the banks of the Nore in the south. But then, as in the time of the old poet, “Punishment, though lame, seldom fails to overtake the wretch going on before.” It was no part of Perrott’s policy to vex or distress pious Catholics who lived quietly, and there is reason to suppose that the owner of the swper-altare was not another ecclesi- astical rogue and blackleg like Sir Denis, but a religious man, quietly and without offence ministering to the spiritual needs of his flock. Perrott when he heard about this unauthorized breaking into a religious house was very angry, and directed a searching inquiry. The whole story of the forgery was laid bare; Sir Denis and Byrd were arrested and tried before the Castle Chamber, which was the Irish counterpart of the Star Chamber. - The two rogues were found guilty. Byrd, though the actual forger, was, as the weaker vessel, only sentenced to stand in the pillory, and to endure twelve months’ imprisonment. Sir Denis, as “the superior fiend,” being already earless, was condemned on this occasion to lose his nose, and remain a prisoner in the castle for a time which does not appear. Sir Denis’s nose was accordingly “ bitten off” by one of the constable’s men—with steel.. When Perrott left Ireland, this inveterate scapegrace, as well as our boy hero and his friends, were inmates of Dublin Castle. There, in his melancholy cell, steadily losing flesh, sat Sir Denis O’Rouane, darkly brooding over the past, the present, and the future, and in a humble, thatched dwelling in the south a pale face was growing daily paler and more wistful, and a flock of little O’Rouanes, not now in good liking, wondered what had become of their dad. Mean- 108 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE time, in his cell sat and brooded the noseless one, but his thoughts did not turn towards self-reformation. Yet, though forgotten by all, the noseless one was destined to become a figure in history, and will be remembered when his betters are forgotten. CHAPTER XV O’ROUANE, THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD DEPUTY In the winter of 1589 one of Fitzwilliam’s jackals, prowling round amongst the prisoners in search of possible matter of accusation against Perrott, inter- viewed the priest in his wretched cell—a sleek, well- fed, well-dressed jackal, every, button doing its duty, a great contrast to the captive, whose fetid clothes hung loosely round his shrunken frame. The jackal’s address was polished, his manner suasive and friendly. O’Rouane perceived that he was wanted. A vague sense of something good coming stirred within him. It was succeeded instantly by the less agreeable reflec- tion—“May not this be a trap?” | Furtively he observed the jackal as well as he could in the dim light, The jackal, perceiving this, proceeded to assure him and reassure him, There were grave suspicions against Perrott. Anything confirming them would be welcome in high quarters. This cell was cold, dark, and damp, this bread and water insipid and innutri- tious. Let Sir Denis bethink him what it would be to be a witness against Perrott in a State trial, and under the protection of great people. “He bit off my nose,” cried the priest. “ Man, look at the state in which he has left me.” 109 110 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE “Yea, truly; he has disfigured thee for life. Thou hast terrible wrongs to avenge. But I mean something against his public credit and reputation, something that would prove a disloyal mind to the Queen and the Reformed religion.” Light, not from heaven, began to dawn in the priest’s mind. “Hem, well, I will say that Sir John Perrott as good as confessed to me that he was a Papist.” “ How—what—where ?” cried the Jackal. “Be more circumstantial, man.” “ Marry, in this very building, and in his own private chamber. I know enough to bring his head to the block, an I were once free to tender my testimony against the traitor, and write a book.” Sir Denis’s memory and imagination were growing momentarily more powerful. His eyes, turning inward, searched a visionary past for useful matter, and found it. “Sir John Perrott had me into his own room to say Mass for him,” he went on; “and after I had said the Mass for him he confessed himself to me, and I shrived him.” “Will you put that m a book?” quoth the jackal. “ Ay will I, and more than that.” At this moment the lean figure of Byrd, with a quill in his hand, rose vividly before the priest’s mind. | “Why, now that I remember,” he went on, “there . is a letter from Perrott to the King of Spain. Oh, a most wicked and traitorous letter.” “ But the terms, the terms?” yelped the jackal. “ Nay, the terms I cannot rightly recall, but it was a most wicked and naughty letter. I had it in my hands and read it. Sir John Perrott gave it to me to O ROUANE, THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD DEPUTY 111 be sent into Spain, for my dwelling is near Waterford, and ships ply thence to the Groyne.” “Thou hadst, then, good favour and countenance from the Lord Deputy ?” “Yea, I had that indeed. Have I not told you that he did secretly bring me from this dungeon to his private chamber to say Mass for him, and to shrive him ?” “ And thou with thy nose bitten off by his orders !” “Yea, truly. A man of God bears not malice, and there was no other priest in the Castle.” “T see,’ replied the jackal dubiously. “But the letter. Didst thou perchance make a copy of it ?” “A copy, forsooth; nay, man, I know where the letter is, and in safe hands too. Litera scripta manet. Dost think I would send a letter of that heinousness out of the realm? Nay, I am a loving and loyal subject. Let me get free but for one sennight, and I will have the letter.” The thought of Byrd and his great skill as a scrivener was now strong in the priest’s mind. All manner of rich and rare possibilities were disclosing themselves. “Sayst thou so?” cried the jackal. “ Bethink thee well of all this; I shall be here anon.” From that moment Sir Denis O’Rouane’s star of fortune began to ascend. The same day he had for ‘supper, not bread and water, but chicken and bacon, and a goodly stoup of ale. The jailer, heretofore so _ gruff and brutal, was polite, even respectful, and seemed anxious to converse. “Set down the mess, fellow, and take thyself away,” cried the priest. We are rising in the world, and we know it, Next day he was removed to a more commodious 112 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE lodging, and generally cleaned up and brushed, and made more presentable. Nourishing food and drink were set before him three times a day, for how can the mind be bold and inventive when the stomach clamours to be filled? Finally, he came into a very high presence indeed, and the Lord Deputy of Ireland inclined his viceregal ear to the noseless one and his artless tale, and for a while forgot his own corporal aches and griefs. “The Spanish letter,” that was the thing. The massing for Sir John Perrott, and the shriving of him after he had confessed, were all very well in their way, and must go into the priest’s “book,” but the litera scripta, in Perrott’s own hand, with his autograph at the foot, that was the jewel. By hook or by crook, and though men should die for it, Fitzwilliam must get that letter. Sir Denis could only recover that letter as an escaped prisoner. To let the priest free, and not be himself seen in the business, was the problem now for Fitzwilliam. There were deep plottings and plannings over this bad bit of a bad road, the plotters in deadly earnest. Old Mr. Maplesdeane, a dependant of Fitz- william, and captain of the prison service, was very helpful at this point. One morning there was a great hubbub in the Castle, men protesting and Fitzwilliam storming. A prisoner had escaped during the night—it was Sir Denis O’Rouane. A scapegoat was necessary to save the Viceroy’s or Mr. Maplesdeane’s credit, and a scapegoat was found. One of the constable’s men was hanged for that eruption of a State prisoner. The plotters were in deadly earnest. When an Elizabethan man went for an enemy he did not stick at trifles. : A week or so later, upon information received, Fitz william’s guard searched a certain house in Dublin, O’ROUANE, THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD DEPUTY 113 and there discovered and’ arrested Sir Denis, who was marched back to imprisonment, but seemed no way cast down in consequence, so that men wondered at his fortitude. Not many minutes passed ere there was in Fitz- william’s hands, and under his delighted eyes, a singu- larly interesting letter in Perrott’s handwriting, and subscribed with his name. Fitzwilliam, as soon as he could for malign joy, wrote a letter to the Queen, along with which he folded up Perrott’s. He wrote another to Lord Burleigh, bade his son John prepare to sail at once for Chester, and ride thence to London as fast as he could go. The letter to Burleigh was as follows— “February 16, 1590. Dublin Castle—Sends by his son John a letter to be delivered to the Queen. One Denis O'Rouane brought it to me, together with his wife. It is subscribed by Sir John Perrott, and addressed to the King of Spain. Sir Denis O’'Rowane said Mass to Sir John Perrott after he had confessed him. If your lordship did hear what was confessed it would, the party saith, give you more to do than marvel. Sir Denis is now writing a book of informations ; it will take him some time, as one of the constable’s men bit off a piece of his nose, and he can work only at short fits. Encloses— “Sur John Perrott to the King of Spain—Acknow- ledges his letters to him when he was President of Munster’ (some fifteen years before). “Offers of King Philip will give him the whole land of Wales for ever, then he, Perrott, will undertake to get him the two lands of England and Ireland. “SIR JOHN PERROTT.” I 114 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE Before he reached London young Fitzwilliam was passed with scant salutation or with none by a party of Trish gentlemen, going at the top of their speed. The youth wondered at their discourtesy. They had hawk- boys with them, and hawks and led horses. Every- where they hired the fleetest horses, and did not spare them. Honest young Fitzwilliam, who did not know much, thought such conduct unkind. When he learned their names he ceased to wonder. They were gentlemen of Perrott’s faction in the Pale. Such rascals could be guilty of anything. But it was not through dis- courtesy that they passed the Lord Deputy’s son on the road. Rogues like O’Rouane have always more strings than one to their bow. While he was at large the thought struck him—“ This move against a man so mighty as Perrott may fail. Then shall I be ruined indeed; torn first on the rack, and then hanged like a dog. Better make myself a friend in that quarter too, and tell as much as I dare, receiving a promise of ultimate protec- tion, and in the meantime get cash in hand for my secret.” So Perrott’s Irish friends learned that the Fitzwillamites were formulating a charge against Per- rott, with O’Rouane for chief witness. When young Fitzwilliam started for London they knew the nature of the despatches which he bore. They too started for London. They would pre-occupy the Queen’s ear and that of the Council, and let them know what manner of man was O’Rouane. The hawks and led horses— war-horses—were presents for the members of the Council. No one then visited great people without a gift in his hand. But the game now played was far deeper than those simple-minded Irish gentlemen at all O'ROUANE, THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD DEPUTY 115 suspected. They saw not beyond it to the veiled figure —crowned, A little later the Council in Dublin received an order from the Imperial Council to inquire into this matter of the Spanish letter. ~The Council duly sat, presided over by Fitzwilliam. They had no inkling how the wind blew in high quarters, did not yet know that it blew dead against Perrott. They thought that they were merely called upon to quash, formally, certain monstrous and in- credible charges. Duly the Irish Council reported that O’Rouane’s story about the massing, confessing, and shriving was the idle tale of a man devoid of all credit and reputation; and that, as to the letter, it was a forgery, the work of a certain convicted forger, Master Henry Byrd, set on and instigated by the priest. The Council then dissolved, and wended homewards with their darned heels. But they were soon enlightened. When the time necessary for the going and return of the post to London had elapsed, the councillors one by one were summoned to Fitzwilliam’s private chamber in the Castle, where the Lord Deputy read for each man’s behoof a very sharp and pointed letter, the Queen’s autograph. We see here how State trials were managed in those golden days. The Council was a second time convened—this time to review those former judicial findings under which Byrd was pilloried, and O’Rouane’s nose was bitten off. Owing to the enlightenment recently received, they found that the warrant under which the super-altare, etc. had been carried off was genuine, was in fact Perrott’s, and that O’Rouane and Byrd were foully injured men. An Order in Council was made, in reparation of the 116 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE credit of both, was read with beat of drums, and posted up on church doors through the city. | Next there came an order from the Imperial Council, transferring the whole of the proceedings to London, and Master Worsely, a Queen’s messenger, came to Dublin charged with the duty of conducting over all the witnesses and accused persons. For of witnesses and accused persons, and suspected persons, there were now many. All Perrott’s trustiest and most trusted Irish friends were arrested. In the meantime Fitz- william had not been idle. It was now known that Perrott was to fall, and crowds of obscure creatures rushed forward to tender testimony. Sir Denis O’Rouane was not now alone in the Castle. Margaret Leonard was with him, and all the little O’Rouanes, father, mother, and offspring, all well lodged, well clothed, and well fed. They were all about to cross the sea as witnesses against the man who so late ruled all Ireland like a king. Sir Denis sat well- pleased. in the midst of his family. Whoever fell he was safe, for he had hedged. For the journey to London, Fitzwilliam ordered him a new suit of the most decent clerical’ raiment. Viewed from the rear, by an unobservant eye, he looked quite respectable. There was terror in the Pale, in the shires, and in the territories, Beyond the Shannon Bingham trembled. The President of Connaught was, indeed, no friend of Perrott’s, but Fitzwilliam hated him, and sought his downfall in the downfall of Perrott. Many men trembled. Then the thunder died away, and those who survived looked around on those who had fallen. In the sub- sidence of the storm one thin, small, but very insistive voice was heard, supplying that suggestion of the farcical and absurd which was never quite absent throughout O’ROUANE, THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD DEPUTY 117 the whole course of the tragedy. It was the voice of Mr. Henry Byrd, scrivener, clamouring to be restored to his perch in the High Commission Court; clamour- ing to the Queen and the Lords of the Imperial Council to do him right. “My credit has been repaired,” cried Byrd; “ that sentence against me for forgery has been wiped from the book of the Council Chamber; yet they will not give me back my place in the High Commission Court.” But the State, having got all it desired out of Byrd, now flung him aside. Byrd’s conviction for dishonest practices as a clerk in that court was forwarded to Lord Burleigh, and the creature sank again into his native deep. Perrott’s fall came gradually, so that neither he nor his friends had an opportunity of executing a coup d'état. First, his fair fame was blown upon, but at the same time it was given out that though a compromising letter had come to light, there was nothing in it. He was only directed to absent himself from the meetings of the Council.